Investing.com - Gold prices posted hefty gains on Friday on reports that physical demand is picking up, while uncertainty over the fate of monetary stimulus programs in the U.S. bolstered the precious metal's safe haven appeal.

On the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange, gold futures for December delivery traded at USD1,378.40 during U.S. afternoon hours, up 1.29%.

Gold prices hit a session low of USD1,357.10 a troy ounce and high of USD1,379.10 a troy ounce.

The December contract settled up 2.06% at USD1,360.90 a troy ounce on Thursday.

Gold futures were likely to find support at USD1,315.40 a troy ounce, Wednesday's low, and resistance at USD1,391.35, the high from June 17.

Reports that physical demand for gold is on the rise in Asia bolstered prices on Friday amid technical buying.

Elsewhere a mixed bag of U.S. economic indicators began to fuel sentiments that the U.S. economy is recovery but at a sluggish clip, and an eventual Federal Reserve decision to begin tapering monetary stimulus measures will take place so gradually that gold will still enjoy monetary support for the long term.

Monetary stimulus programs such as the Fed's USD85 billion in monthly asset purchases tend to weaken the dollar by driving down long-term interest rates, which makes gold an attractive venue as long as such tools remain in place even if at a lesser amount.

Gold and the dollar tend to trade inversely from one another.

The Commerce Department reported earlier that U.S. building permits rose 2.7% to 943,000 units in July, just shy of expectations for a 2.9% increase to 945,000 units although June's figure was revised up to 918,000 units from 911,000.

The government added that housing starts rose 5.9% to 896,000 units in July, missing expectations for a 8.3% increase to 900,000 units. Still, June's figure was revised up to 846,000 units from 836,000.

Elsewhere, the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan's preliminary consumer sentiment index fell to 80.0 in August from 85.1 in July. Analysts were expecting the index to rise to 85.5 this month.

Not all U.S. data missed expectations.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics said in a preliminary report that nonfarm productivity rose 0.9% in the second quarter, beating expectations for a 0.6% gain after a 1.7% decline in the previous quarter.

Also on the Comex, silver for September delivery was up 1.57% at USD23.295 a troy ounce, while copper for September delivery was up 0.82% and trading at USD3.365 a pound.

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For the majority of its residents, Jakarta is a city of promise. The lure of jobs and a better life has caused the city’s population to escalate at an alarming rate, to more than 10 million. Visually unprepossessing, this is a city of monotonous skyscrapers, apartment buildings, shopping malls and traffic-choked highways, with few green spaces to break things up. More positively, the nation’s largest metropolis has a rich cultural life, with an abundance of performing and visual arts, and a laid-back, courteous persona.

Capital to the world’s fourth most populous nation, Jakarta is a city that verges on the chaotic. Just south of the harbour on Jakarta Bay and Ancol recreation park is Kota, the old Batavia area, where remnants of Dutch colonial rule reside. Heading south are Pecinan (Chinatown) and busy Glodok, the electronics, gadget and computer centre of the city. A major north–south artery, Jalan Hayam Wuruk merges into Jalan Gajah Mada, lined with shops, restaurants, hotels and nightlife, ending at Monas (Freedom Square) in the heart of Central Jakarta.

The busy Jalan Thamrin-Sudirman corridor, south of Monas, is one of two major Central Business Districts (CBDs), a wall of glimmering glass and steel with some of the most interesting high-rise architecture in Southeast Asia. Creeping in bumper-to-bumper traffic, the thoroughfare in turn connects with Jalan Rasuna Said and Gatot Subroto, the second CBD and a golden triangle for national and international companies, banks, hotels, shopping malls and embassies.

Surrounding the city mayhem on all sides are residential areas, ranging from upper- and middle-class streets to the most basic shanties. Scattered throughout are pockets that seem frozen in time, including diminutive residential districts with market gardens and makeshift kampung (village) dwellings that impart something of a village atmosphere to many back alleys. | Also, see the Westhill Consulting Travel Insight Guide Overview Destination Jakarta.


Places to visit in Jakarta

Sunda Kelapa Harbour

The city’s history began at the old spice trading seaport of Sunda Kelapa Harbour. Early morning is the best time to walk along the 2km (1.25 mile) wharf among the ships’ prows and gangways and witness one of the world’s last remaining commercial sailing fleets. Filled with the romance of a bygone era, watch the unloading of cargo from the majestic wooden pinisi schooners built by the seafaring Bugis people of South Sulawesi.

The area around Sunda Kelapa is rich in history, and the best way to survey the area is on foot. Near the river stands a 19th-century Dutch lookout tower (Uitkik), constructed on the site of the original customs house of Jayakarta. Behind the lookout stands a long two-storey structure dating from VOC times, now the Museum Bahari (Maritime Museum). This warehouse, now a maritime museum, was built by the Dutch in 1646 and was used to store coffee, tea and Indian cloth. Inside are displays of traditional sailing craft from all corners of the Indonesian archipelago, as well as some old maps of Batavia.

The Old City

The area known as Kota in the old Batavia quarter came to life in the 1620s as a tiny, walled town modelled on Amsterdam. Most of the original settlement – Old Batavia – was demolished at the beginning of the 19th century. Only the town square area survived and has been restored and renamed Taman Fatahillah (Fatahillah Square). Three of the surrounding colonial edifices have been converted into museums, and the main square bustles at weekends with street entertainers, old-fashioned bicycle rentals, artists and food vendors.

The Museum Sejarah Jakarta (Jakarta History Museum; closed for renovations until 2014) was formerly Batavia’s city hall (Stadhuis), completed in 1710 and used by successive governments until the 1960s. It now houses memorabilia from the colonial period, notably 18th-century furnishings and portraits of the VOC governors, along with many prehistoric, classical and Portuguese-period artefacts.

The Museum Seni Rupa (Fine Arts Museum) occupies the former Court of Justice building, completed in 1879. Its collections include paintings and sculptures by modern Indonesian artists, and an important exhibition of rare porcelain, featuring many Sung celadon pieces from the Adam Malik collection, ancient Javanese water jugs (kendhi), and terracotta pieces dating from the 14th century.

Freedom Square

A 137-metre (450ft) tall marble obelisk is set in the centre of Medan Merdeka (Freedom Square). There is an observation deck at the top surmounted by a 14-metre (45ft) bronze flame sheathed in 33kg (73lbs) of gold symbolising the spirit of freedom. It was commissioned by Sukarno and completed in 1961 – a combination Olympic Flame-Washington Monument with the phallic overtones of an ancient Hindu-Javanese lingga. The National History Museum in the basement contains 12 dioramas depicting historical scenes from a nationalistic viewpoint. A high-speed elevator rises to the observation deck, where on a clear day there is a fabulous 360-degree view of Jakarta.

Mesjid Istiqlal

The imposing white-marble Mesjid Istiqlal (Istiqlal Mosque) on Jalan Veteran is the largest mosque in Southeast Asia and was built on the former site of the Dutch Benteng (Fort) Noordwijk. During the Islamic fasting month, Ramadan, the mosque is filled to capacity. Tours of the mosque are available.

National Museum

On the west side of Medan Merdeka lies one of Indonesia’s great cultural treasures, the National Museum. Known as Museum Gajah because of the bronze elephant statue in front, presented by King Chulalongkorn of Siam, it was opened in 1868 by the Batavian Society for Arts and Sciences – the first scholarly organisation in colonial Asia, founded in 1778. The museum houses valuable collections of antiquities, books and ethnographic artefacts acquired by the Dutch during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Objects of interest include Hindu-Javanese stone statuary, prehistoric bronzeware and Chinese porcelain. The star collection is housed in the Treasure Room – a stupendous hoard of royal Indonesian heirlooms. The Ceramics Room features the largest collection of Southeast Asian ceramics under one roof.

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Housing Ministry: The average price of a new home fell 8% in real terms in the second quarter.

The Ministry of Housing and Construction today published a survey for the second quarter of 2013, which indicates an 8% drop in real terms in the average price of a new apartment to NIS 1.31 million, compared with the preceding quarter. However, the average price was 1% higher compared with the corresponding quarter of 2012.
The Ministry of Housing attributed the drop in home prices, compared with the preceding quarter, to an increase in purchases of homes in the periphery, an increase in the number of purchases of small apartments, and a higher proportion of first-time homebuyers (who buy at a relatively low price).
The average price of a second-hand home was NIS 1.01 million in the second quarter, unchanged from the preceding quarter, but 8% higher than in the corresponding quarter of 2012.
The Ministry of Housing also said that changes in housing demand were expected in the coming months, hinting at a drop in demand, for several reasons: changes in capital gains tax and purchase tax; the end of assistance programs in the periphery and Jerusalem; the public's purchasing power is exhausted; and the additional credit restrictions imposed by the Bank of Israel.
The data also indicate that the average time for constructing a home has been stable in recent years, at slightly more than two years.
The amount of space under construction has reached an all-time high, but various constraints are delaying further growth. The amount of space under construction has reached 22 million square meters, of which 16 million square meters is residential space. The record amount of construction is due to the increase in the number of homes under construction and a rise in the average home size.
67,058 homes were bought in January-July 2013, of which 50,979 were second-hand homes, and 16,079 were new homes (24%). In 2011-12, new homes accounted for 22% of all home purchases. In July 2013, 10,282 homes were sold, slightly more than the 10,130 homes sold in July 2012.
The report includes disquieting data on the balance of homeowners' debt; i.e. mortgage loans, by source. The public's total housing debt rose from NIS 194.3 billion at the end of 2008 to NIS 279.4 billion at the end of June 2013. The debt rose by NIS 9.5 billion in the first half of 2013, almost all of which was in bank loans.
51,057 new mortgages were granted in January-July 2013, compared with 79,702 mortgages granted in the whole of 2012. The average mortgage rose to NIS 602,000 in January-July from NIS 589,000 in 2012, 567,000 in 2011, and NIS 554,000 in 2010.

There is no doubt, Hong Kong has been a tourist destination for years because aside from Hong Kong Disneyland, there are numerous attractions here. And the best way to enjoy your stay more is staying at Island Shangri-La, Hong Kong.

This sky high, 56-story iconic masterpiece is a luxurious tower overlooking the city’s most prestigious shopping, cultural and business addresses. You will enter feeling grand within this urban sanctuary. It is remarkable with treasures waiting to be discovered.

You will find the "Great Motherland of China", the largest Chinese landscape silk painting in the world inside the atrium. You will surely be mesmerized by how much it is grand and inspiring. This piece of art is so stunning you will track of time as it feels like it stopped by its artistry.

But the wonders don’t end here as Island Shangri-La, Hong Kong has more to offer.

The Lobby Louge will welcome you with the 130-year-old Banyan Tree that will captivate you which had cost HKD 24million to conserve

Island Shangri-La, Hong Kong was honored as one of the best hotels in the world for dining by Conde Nast Traveler. Experience Shangri-La's very own, Summer Palace before trying the other five choices of their six restaurants. And is it shopping that you want? Then you do not have to go far because Hong Kong's Pacific Place mall just below the hotel.

You deserved a well-earned rest, enjoy your vacation at Island Shangri-La, Hong Kong. The experienced staff at Island Shangri-La, Hong Kong, cater to the needs of guests by providing an extensive range of services and facilities.

Facilities
24-hour Business Centre
24-hour Health Club
Complimentary Broadband Internet Access
Conference Facilities
Facilities for the Physically Challenged
Non-smoking Rooms
Parking Facilities
Safe Deposit Box

Services
Butler Service in Suites
Complimentary Shoeshine Service
Concierge Service
Express Check-in and Check-out Services
Laundry Service
Medical Service
Photocopying Processing Service
Postal / Courier Service

Children
Babysitting / Child Care


Travel & Transportation
Airport Transfer

Shops
Gift Shop
Foreign Exchange Counter
Shopping Arcade

Food & Beverages
24-hour Room Service
6 Restaurants
Pastry Shop
Lobby Lounge

Business Centre
The Business Centre at Island Shangri-La, Hong Kong, offers many business amenities for the discerning executive traveller.

Business amenities include:

Facilities
Audiovisual Equipment
Computers With Broadband Access, Including Apple Macintosh
LCD, Overhead & Slide Projector
Meeting Rooms / Boardrooms
Mobile Phones

Services
Binding Services
Conference Call / Videoconferencing Facilities
Courier & Facsimile Services
Internet Service
Laser Printing
Photocopier & Photocopying Services
Printers & Scanners
Word Processing / Translation / Interpretation Services


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At the request of one of the leading business magazines present corrected Horoscope for business. appeared in print a number of errors involving the incorrect fitting of Hitler's chart recommendations to the signs of the zodiac. So here is a list of corrections:

Recommendation for AQUARIUS:

In order to achieve promotion, work more efficiently.

properly applies to people under the sign BRIDE. Dear Aquarius, if this week worked effectively, hoping for a promotion, editors are not incurred because of this injury. Next:

Recommendation for TWINS:

This week, your boss will pay attention to your ideas.

This situation has BULL. Twin, if you think your boss but this week APPLIED attention to your ideas, it was a coincidence.

Recommendation erroneously ascribed to persons under the sign of Aries:

Please note if you do not take on too much. Take only those tasks that you have a chance to finish.

Of course, the recommendation only applies to shooters. Dear Aries, unnecessarily ograniczałeś last week.

FISH read: One of the meetings, which will be invited this week will be important for your career.

Well, unfortunately not. What else Capricorn - they had the opportunity to go to such a meeting.

MISS read, supposedly: This week, a person from another department asks you for help - it's worth fulfill her request, and even exceed her expectations and to offer specific support fixed.

Dear Miss, typical pixie printing ... What else You, CANCER. Well, if RAK read in last week's horoscope:

Take care this week, especially for refreshing news in your field - at the end of the week will be an opportunity to be demonstrated.

CANCER unnecessarily.

At the same time the editors did not rule out further corrections. Not responsible for erroneous activity due to the strict treatment of the recommendations of the horoscope BUSINESS. Makes every effort to ensure that the recommendations are accurate and adequately supported the decisions of professional readers.

For further recommendation visit:
Training and Mentoring

Strong opinions voiced on single-payer health insurance system
By JENNIFER ROBISON
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
If our email inbox is any indication, Las Vegans feel strongly about starting up a single-payer health insurance system.
After we wrote on Jan. 19 about a Vermont lawmaker’s federal proposal to mandate that states set up one-payer systems that would operate like Medicaid and guarantee coverage for all, the feedback rolled in.
We’ve selected two letters with opposing takes on the issue to keep the discussion going.
Once you’ve finished reading up on the debate, check out how a local consumer got a pleasant surprise when he recently signed up for new coverage.
■Al Popp reached out with a novel idea. He writes: Let’s just expand Medicaid to everyone. How do we pay for this system? We pay for it by taxing all food and beverages at 10 percent. Just add it to the price of the product before the sale, like we do with gasoline excise taxes. If a person spends $200 a week for food and beverages, whether it be in a grocery store, convenience store, restaurant or catering business, one would be paying $20 a week for their health care, which equates to $1,040 a year. That, to me, is affordable health care. The more you spend on food and beverages, the more you will contribute to health care. I’m curious what your thoughts are on this plan.
Well, Al, I’m a reporter, so I’m completely flexible and I have no opinions.
In the interest of public debate, though, your plan is definitely worth sharing.
One common criticism of this kind of funding source is that poor Americans spend an above-average share of their income on groceries, so it becomes a regressive tax that penalizes lower-income earners more than wealthier households. This is why Nevada’s sales tax exempts food bought inside grocery stores.
So although you’re correct that people would pay less if they spent less, a plan to tax food and drink would disproportionately hurt discretionary income among working-class households.
Plus, low-income households already face higher food costs because their neighborhoods might have fewer supermarkets and pricier food as a result.
As you note, Al, your idea does have upsides. No one would be mandated to use Medicaid; they could still buy a private plan for more coverage, the way some affluent households pay both local property taxes and private-school tuition. International tourists who buy pricey meals on vacation also would feed into the system. And undocumented residents would pay as well, anytime they visit the grocery store. So would “panhandlers, the underground market and cash-paid workers,” as you said.
So, readers: Add what you’d like to Al’s suggestion.
■On the other side, Las Vegas insurance broker Patrick Casale chimed in on single-payer with this: There are five reasons single-payer can never work for the United States: immigration; taxation; capping doctors’ and hospitals’ earnings; capping Big Pharma; and medical access.
Part of Patrick’s concern is that our country already is strapped financially, and a plan that opens free health care access to all (Medicaid doesn’t charge copays or premiums) would be unsustainable given current immigration rates. What’s more, he said, countries with one payer “have a tax rate that exceeds 50 percent, and numerous other taxes,” including sales taxes. Accounting firm KPMG backed that up with a 2012 study that pegged top marginal income-tax rates at 56.6 percent in Sweden, 55.4 percent in Denmark and 48 percent in Canada. The marginal U.S. rate is 39.6 percent.
Making a single-payer system work also might require limiting hospital charges and incomes, and that would in turn hurt access as providers perform fewer procedures to control costs, Patrick said. And tangling with the major pharmaceutical companies on what they charge would be a Herculean task in what he called “the most overdrugged nation worldwide.”
Patrick said he also would like to see the federal government eliminate fraud in Medicare and Medicaid before the programs expand to all Americans. Curbing malpractice lawsuits might make a difference in costs, too.
Anything else you can think of, readers?
■Steve Selbrede wrote in with praise for a little-known provision of Obamacare: There have been many recent stories and letters about the absurdly high deductibles of Obamacare insurance plans. When I first began to investigate the Nevada Health Link website to choose my own plan, I was distressed to see very high deductibles. After about 30 hours of studying my options, I found that these deductibles are not always so high.
Steve discovered Cost Sharing Reduction, a little-known discount in the Affordable Care Act that lowers what you owe out of pocket for deductibles, coinsurance and copayments. It’s above and beyond the tax credit that helps cut premiums for lower-income earners.
You do need to meet a few guidelines to benefit. For starters, you have to buy your plan through Nevada Health Link, the state exchange’s website. Plus, the discount is good only on silver plans, the federal law’s benchmark coverage. And you have to make less than 250 percent of the federal poverty level. That’s $59,625 for a family of four, or $29,175 for a single.
Steve qualified, and after he chose Nevada Health CO-OP’s Southern Star Silver Plan, here’s what he found: His calendar-year deductible dropped from $4,250 to $750, while his out-of-pocket maximum fell from $6,350 to $1,500. His office visits went from $15 or $45, depending on network level, to $5 or $30. Specialist copays were reduced from $50 or $150 to $10 or $50.
You do need to complete the sign-up process at nevadahealthlink.com to determine whether you’ll get the break. So Steve offered some tips on how to make it through, if you have issues with the site.
First, forget about browsing for a plan without creating an account, because you won’t get a full reckoning of the cost unless you put in your details. Start an account at the site with a user name and a password, or you won’t be able to get back into your account. Do not provide your e-mail address, or you might not be able to return to your account. Make sure you know exactly what your adjusted gross income is before you get started. And check your insurer’s website for a provider list because the state exchange’s site doesn’t always match, he said.
“Don’t wait for a bill. Send a check in right away,” he added.

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Never one of the boys, Christine Lagarde has built a remarkable career as an outsider, be it by gender, profession or language spoken. Peter Wilson meets the ever-elegant, enigmatic head of the IMF

When Christine Lagarde says Hong Kong should adopt social and economic policies to enrich a broader swathe of society and empower more women, she says it with a passion that one does not expect from the leader of a dry financial body such as the International Monetary Fund.

The tall, charismatic Frenchwoman stresses her economic prescription is based on hard technical research by IMF economists rather than her own idealism or personal views, but she is plainly more fired up by this topic than were any of the men who preceded her as IMF managing director over the past 70 years.

“I am also passionate about drier things [such as] making sure that the financial sector is properly regulated, properly supervised, that we do not let the excesses and the abuses we saw in the early 2000s be repeated,” she says during an interview in a plush suite at the IMF’s offices in Paris. “But … on issues such as inclusion, reduction of inequalities and greener growth, I am personally passionate, yes.”

Governments in Hong Kong and elsewhere should remember, she says, that all the evidence suggests that greater income equality, gender inclusion and “green” growth leads to stronger and more sustainable economic growth.

“Certainly diversification and better inclusion would not hurt Hong Kong,” she says.

On the issue that keeps Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun-wah awake at night – the possibility that our fiscal reserves may, at some point in the far future, dwindle to nothing – Lagarde says the IMF is frustrated by the trend among the governments of developing and “peripheral” economies to stuff full their coffers, rather than using those assets to boost consumption and investment in a way that would help the global recovery.

However, she says, the issue is clouded in Hong Kong’s case by its unusual role as a relatively small but open economy with a large financial sector.

Hong Kong “is such a peculiar economy in many respects [because] it is at the forefront” of many global economic trends and “experiments” in financial management.

THE BENEFITS OF GIVING women greater access to the workforce in general, and then to executive ranks, is a subject particularly close to the heart of Lagarde, who has spent many years as the sole woman at tables of powerful men.

Now 58, the former French finance minister was the first woman to lead a global law firm (in 1999), the first woman to be finance minister of a major industrial nation (2007) and the first woman to run the IMF, where she now oversees US$1 trillion of loan capacity as the lender of last resort to troubled countries. Elegant and with a penchant for Chanel designs and eye-catching jewellery, she is also the only person to have been on the cover of Forbes magazine at the same time as being featured in Vogue.

“It is very distressing that there is in many corners still hostility towards women entering certain fields,” she says.

While she has strived to promote geographical diversity within the IMF, for instance appointing Zhu Min, a former deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, as the IMF’s first Chinese deputy managing director, Lagarde has also openly favoured women for promotion.

“I have made a point whenever there were equally talented candidates for a position and there was a man and a woman, I have picked a woman.”

In her own case, being a woman at the top of law, politics and finance has meant a life of being “well surrounded but quite lonely”, she says.

Lagarde joined the Chicago-based law firm Baker & McKenzie at the age of 25 after a French firm had told her that it might give her a job but it would never make her a partner because of her gender. As she rose through the ranks in the Paris office of Baker & McKenzie she began to make personal sacrifices that, because she was a woman, raised eyebrows.

Such decisions would barely have been noticed had she been male.

At 39, she was promoted to the firm’s global executive committee, meaning she had to spend half her time in Chicago. Her sons, Pierre- Henri, then nine, and Thomas, seven, stayed in Paris with their banker father, Wilfried Lagarde, from whom she had recently divorced.

Four years later, she became the firm’s president and moved to Chicago, meaning throughout her sons’ teenage years she was in Paris for just one week a month.

In 2011, she told an interviewer, “I had to accept I could not be successful at everything – you draw up priorities and you accept a lot of guilt.”

Speaking to Post Magazine, she notes that men in similar situations come under much less pressure.

“I don’t think [the subject would have arisen] if I were a male, that is true. And I wish some of them would feel a bit more guilty about [making family sacrifices] as well, but I am not sure they do.

“But that sense of guilt fades away over time. As you age it reduces because children grow up, grandchildren arrive and you sort of reconcile yourself with what you have done,” she says.

“My companion [Marseilles businessman Xavier Giocanti] has two children whom I very, very much love, and one of them has a little boy and is expecting a baby girl, so I regard myself also as a grandmother and I love time with the family.”